Under the Hammer: April 27, 2017

President Donald John Trump will have completed his first 100 days in office on Saturday, April 29, but reporters have been writing about that milestone since almost his first day in office.

The mainstream media are trying their best to convince Trump supporters that Trump hasn’t kept his campaign promises.

So far Trump supporters, who paid absolutely no attention to the mainstream media during the election, are keeping to that practice, but that doesn’t stop the mainstream media from trying.

Trump has accomplished an enormous amount.

They say when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you have to do is to stop digging. Former President Barack Obama had eight years to dig a hole, and the good news is the digging has stopped and Trump has started the process of climbing out of the hole. That in itself is a considerable achievement.

One thing that has to be considered when judging Trump’s first 100 days is that, in essence, the American people elected a third-party candidate to the presidency.

I don’t mean Trump is not a Republican, because he is. Bbut the Republican Party hierarchy didn’t support him. Trump had no base in the mainstream Republican Party.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan didn’t support Trump. No, he did support Trump, but then he didn’t support Trump, and then, as I remember it, on election night when it was announced that Trump had won Florida, Ryan started supporting Trump again; but it was a busy night and my memory might be a little fuzzy.

Who in the world knows who Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell supported.

Obama used McConnell to mop the floor. But with Trump in office, McConnell, who does not project strength, finally took a stand and got Neil Gorsuch confirmed as a Supreme Court justice. Maybe that will boost McConnell’s ego and he’ll actually attempt to get another bill through the Senate – something he rarely did while Obama was president.

When you look at the men that are considered leaders of the Republican Party in Congress, Trump doesn’t have a lot to work with. Or another way to look at it is that Trump has a lot of work to do. Before he can get anything done he first has to inspire the leaders to lead.

Ryan’s job is to get Republican bills through the House. He failed miserably on the Obamacare repeal and reform bill. He failed, but no heads rolled. If the Republican Party doesn’t establish some party discipline, then in four years people are going to be talking about all the things the Republicans could have done as they hand over the keys to Congress to the Democrats.

Trump may be able to surgically implant some backbone in the Republican leadership or he may start looking for some leaders among the Republicans already there, but Trump has a huge problem with the Republicans in Congress.

Trump was elected by the entire country, something the congressional leaders can’t claim. The Republicans in Congress, if they were smart, would pay some attention to the president from their own party that the people elected, but the lack of leadership on the Republican side of the aisle is frightening.

Also frightening is the Democratic leadership on the other side of the aisle.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has always had trouble making sense, but it really appears that all that Botox has affected her brain. If she were a Republican her statements would be in headlines every day and the political pundits would be talking about dementia. She has never been the brightest bulb on the tree but she used to be able to make a speech without some horrendous gaffe. The mainstream media do a really good job of protecting her, and the Republicans should be thankful that the Democrats chose her to lead her party, but considering the opposition, Ryan should be doing whatever he wants. Of course, his problem is not with the Democrats, it’s with the Republicans.

It’s the same in the upper chamber. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer played right into the Republican’s hands by opposing Gorsuch. But again, if that is what the Senate Republicans are up against, they should have no problems.

Two of the big problems for the Republicans in the Senate are the Trump-hating Bobbsey Twins – Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham. With such a narrow majority, the Republicans have to drag McCain and Graham – who both think they should have been president – along with them.

The problem that McCain and Graham had in getting to the White House is that not many American voters agreed with their assessment of themselves as presidential material.

McCain had his shot, but he ran a campaign that seemed to be designed to lose, and Graham failed to convince even the people in his home state that he should be president.

But all that taken into consideration, Trump in is first 100 days in the White House has accomplished a lot, most of it by executive action: Jobs are being created, the financial markets continue to set records, government regulations are actually being reduced. But there is one action that stands out more than the rest of his considerable accomplishments, and that is the cruise missile attack on Syria.

It sent a message loud and clear across the globe that the US was not going to pretend to be just another nation but was going to reassert itself as the most powerful nation on Earth.

When Obama backed down from attacking Syria for using poison gas on its own people, all around the world the word went out that the US was a paper tiger. Trump wasted no time in setting the world straight that the paper was gone and the tiger was back. The effect of that one decision by Trump changed the world.

Now it appears that Trump is going to finally do something about North Korea. Trump is absolutely right that it is unacceptable for North Korea to have the capability of launching a nuclear missile strike on the US.

North Korea should have never been allowed to develop nuclear weapons. But former President Jimmy Carter and the president at the time, Bill Clinton, arranged for that to happen. North Korea, thanks to those two feckless men, has nuclear capabilities.

But they don’t have the entire package yet – nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles – and it appears that Trump is not going to allow that to happen.

It’s possible that dropping the mother of all bombs in Afghanistan was a trial run to find out for certain just how powerful those bombs are and if they are powerful enough to destroy the North Korean nuclear and missile facilities.

China has to be on board with whatever action the US takes in North Korea, but it certainly appears that Trump is moving step by step closer to taking decisive action.

If China wasn’t in agreement that something has to be done, it doesn’t seem likely that Trump would have invited all 100 senators to the White House for a meeting after first meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Trump reportedly has agreed to leave the border wall out of the current budget deal, but the need for the wall has diminished since he became president and made it the policy to send back those caught crossing border.

It is absurd that some have said Trump hasn’t kept his campaign promises because he didn’t build the wall in his first 100 days. The process of deciding what kind of wall to build has started, and when it comes time to start construction, no doubt Trump will find the money whether Congress likes it or not.

*****

Trump’s executive order to cut federal funding to cities that aren’t obeying the federal law on immigration was overturned by a federal District Court judge.

It doesn’t make any sense for any one of 678 federal District Court judges – who are not elected to office but are appointed for life – to be able to overturn a decision by the president of the United States.

So for the president to do anything by executive action he has to make sure that all 678 federal District Court judges like the idea. How can the president have far less power than someone he appoints to office?

The president can’t do anything about the federal District Court judges already in office, but Congress can. The Republicans in Congress should at the very least start looking at revamping the entire federal court system with the exception of the Supreme Court, which is established in the Constitution. All the other courts are created by Congress and could be dissolved by Congress.

If the federal District Court judges think they should be running the country, they need to be removed from office, which Congress could do.

So far it appears the Republicans in Congress don’t have the backbone to do anything. If they can’t get together to repeal Obamacare – something most of them campaigned on – then what chance is there that they could take a radical action like changing the federal court system and putting 678 judges temporarily out of work?

The judges appointed by Obama hopefully wouldn’t be rehired, but there is an abundance of lawyers in the country. Surely the Republicans could find enough qualified attorneys to fill the jobs. The liberal judges cannot be allowed to run the country if we are to have a representative democracy.

What it appears we have now is some weird type of oligarchy where 678 appointed judges are running the country.

*****

Bill O’Reilly and North Carolina’s House Bill 2 (HB2) have a lot in common.

Nobody at Fox News seemed bothered by the fact that O’Reilly had a number of sexual harassment complaints filed against him. The complaints were filed, women were paid and everybody went on about their business of making money.

But when advertisers started dropping off O’Reilly’s show, suddenly the sexual harassment charges became something that Fox couldn’t tolerate.

HB2 was similar. Few of the complaints were about HB2 itself; most of the objections came from the economic damage to the state from businesses who said they weren’t going to come here or expand operations in the state. It wasn’t until basketball got involved that the pressure was finally enough to force the Democrats and Republicans to come together and take action.

With O’Reilly, the left didn’t have to bring in basketball to get what it wanted. It was enough for liberal forces to put pressure on advertisers to stop advertising on the show.

Some may think that shows like The O’Reilly Factor are about the news, but they are primarily about making money, and as long as O’Reilly’s show was making big bucks, Fox let him do whatever he wanted on and off the air.

It’s evident that O’Reilly was targeted by liberal advocacy groups that wanted to get him off the air, and they succeeded.

Lately liberals haven’t been doing a very good job of winning elections, but have been doing great with economic boycotts. At some point they will take it too far and it will backfire.

The question is, who is next victim in their sights.

*****

Leonard Pitts last week wrote about a situation where Alex Jones of InfoWars is being sued for custody of his children by his ex-wife who says he’s crazy based on the stuff he has said on the radio.

The attorney for Alex Jones argues that it is all just an act. They are probably both half right. Jones is probably about half crazy and believes about half of what he says on the air. The problem is, which half does he believe and which half is for ratings.

We live in a world where millions of people are hooked on reality shows that are just about as real as I Love Lucy. In fact, I Love Lucy may have been closer to reality than some reality shows. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz really were married. He really was a singer.

Reality shows have writers. What on earth would a writer do on a real reality show?

Television is all about ratings and ratings are all about entertainment. The internet is even more driven by popularity. Everyone in the business knows that they are just one quick click away from oblivion if they are boring. People aren’t going to watch boring when they can, by slightly moving one finger, find something more interesting.

People used to watch a television show because it was the best of three options on at the moment. Now, with virtually everything available all the time, the rules are changing and it is becoming ever more difficult for anyone to hold on to an audience big enough to attract advertisers.

Nobody knows where it’s going to end, or if they do, they aren’t telling.

I remember listening to the radio half a day waiting to hear one song. Now any song I can think of, even if I’m not sure of the title or the artist, I can listen to in a matter of seconds. It’s incredible but it means I don’t listen to the radio all day, along with all the commercials, to hear one song. The whole nature of the game is changing rapidly.

*****

Every time I read about a big power outage like the one in San Francisco last week, I wonder if the terrorists have finally figured out how to attack the US with very little risk to themselves. Particularly in this case, since there were also less severe power outages in Los Angeles and New York at the same time. If you believe in coincidences then that is a whale of a coincidence; and if you don’t believe in coincidences then it is a whale of a problem.

The electrical system in this country is extremely fragile and vulnerable. A tree branch caused a massive black out on the East Coast in 2003 that affected 10 million people in the US and Canada.

If instead of blowing themselves up and killing 10 or 20 people, ISIS, al Qaeda or one of our other enemies decides to really harm the US, they will launch a coordinated attack on the US electrical infrastructure.

The electrical infrastructure has always been fragile, but Obama’s policies made things worse. Instead of concentrating on a more robust system, meaning a system with more excess capacity and redundancy, the Obama administration concentrated on reducing greenhouse gases, which meant closing down extremely reliable coal plants and replacing them with natural gas and unreliable sources such as solar and wind power.

The vulnerability of the system is well known, but so far not much has been done to fix it. One analyst said that an attack on as few as three substations could black out a good portion of the country.

Most Americans are totally dependent on electricity 24/7, and if we have to go without it for even an hour, it disrupts our lives to some degree.

Our enemies don’t have to physically attack anything; cyber attacks could be even worse. In the US we have decided to spend our money on social programs rather than on infrastructure and, as a result, we have tremendous infrastructure problems. But it appears that the electrical infrastructure may be where we are most vulnerable.

What if North Korea gives up on the idea of a military attack and makes an all out cyber attack on the US electrical infrastructure? It’s possible they could cause massive problems for the US economy without firing a shot.

*****

Great Britain is on the way out of the European Union; other countries are likely to follow. If the leadership of the EU really wanted to hold the partnership between nations together, it could move a long way toward doing that by going back to what the EU was in the beginning. It was not supposed to be a nation, but an economic alliance.

The EU should get rid of the flag and the anthem. It should quit trying to run all the countries in Europe and go back to being an economic alliance. There is no reason for the EU to have regulations on the curvature of bananas and cucumbers. It shouldn’t be deciding the length of the school year or the drinking age in all EU countries.

Great Britain never adopted the Euro. Why should any country be forced to adopt the currency?

It makes sense for other countries to wait and see how Great Britain does outside of the EU, but if Great Britain prospers then it doesn’t appear that the EU in its present form will survive. It may be too late for the EU to save itself, even if it did implement reforms. Since it seems that the EU is not going to turn Europe into one country, it might be time for the EU to settle for less rather than losing it all.

*****

Let’s say the global warming fanatics are right and the glaciers melt, raising the sea level. Does anyone really believe that New York or Miami will be deserted? No, what it means is that low-lying cities on the coast will build walls to keep the water out. A glacier doesn’t melt over night and the sea level isn’t going rise in one day. There will be plenty of time for people to build as big a wall as is needed.

It would be expensive, but the US should have a lot of experience in building big walls after the one on the southern border is complete.

*****

The Iranian nuclear deal looked bad for the US and its allies when it was signed. Obama made it clear that he was willing to do whatever he was asked to get the deal signed, which is not a good negotiating technique. But then, what experience did Obama have in negotiating anything?

As it turns out the deal was even worse than reported because it included letting a bunch of Iranian terrorists off the hook. US agencies had been investigating some of them for years and finally had enough evidence to have them arrested, but Obama called that off.

Obama paid a ransom of $400 million in cash for US hostages in Iran. Then Iran was given an additional $1.3 billion or more. But allowing known Iranian terrorists to go on about their business may have been even more damaging than giving Iran money to fund terrorist groups all over the world.

*****

Breitbart is once again being denied permanent press credentials to cover the federal government in Washington, DC. Who is doing the denying? Not the government, but the mainstream media, which get to decide who gets press credentials and who doesn’t.

Breitbart is being denied on trumped up charges, but everyone knows the real reason is because it is conservative. Liberal organizations with almost identical failings have been granted permanent press credentials.

In 2015, the Rhino Times was denied permanent press credentials to cover the state legislature in Raleigh. At the time we had a full-time reporter based in Raleigh covering the legislature, but like Breitbart, we were denied press credentials on trumped-up inadequacies because we are a conservative news organization.

The denials speak volumes about the left-wing bias of the press. The mainstream media are so far left that they don’t want to even recognize that right-wing news organizations can be news organizations. If the news organization leans right it is not, according to the mainstream media, a news organization at all.

This is exactly the type of all-encompassing bias that caused the mainstream media, and the people who still pay attention to it, to completely miss what was happening in the elections last November. The mainstream media not only missed the presidential race but falsely reported on any number of races for the House and Senate.

For example, throughout the election season the mainstream media reported that Sen. Richard Burr was likely to lose his reelection bid. It was such a dominant story that Republican senators offered to help Burr. Burr repeatedly said he was not in trouble.

As it turned out, Burr knows the mainstream media’s bias better than his colleagues in Washington. Burr won reelection by a comfortable but not overwhelming margin. For someone who didn’t get his campaign going until after the Senate adjourned, it was a resounding win.

Of course, the mainstream media completely missed the groundswell of support that put Trump in the White House, but it was also speculating on whether Hillary Clinton’s coattails would be strong enough for the Democrats to win back both the House and the Senate.

The mainstream media got the whole election wrong, but what is incredible is that nobody seems to care. The mainstream media continue everyday to report what Trump calls fake news. Maybe it’s not fake, but it is the news from such a far left perspective that it’s wrong.

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The Rhino has had a long tradition of providing news in Guilford County. The original Rhinoceros Times, founded in 1991, went out of business in May 2013. Snap Publications revived the herbivorous beast and in October 2013, the all-new and improved Rhino Times was started.

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